Joint relation of experience and ability with job performance: Test of three hypotheses.

Abstract

Data from four different jobs (N = 1,474) were used to evaluate three hypotheses of the joint relation of job experience and general mental ability to job performance as measured by (a) work sample measures, (b) job knowledge measures, and (c) supervisory ratings of job performance. The divergence hypothesis predicts an increasing difference and the convergence hypothesis predicts a decreasing difference in the job performance of high- and low-mental-ability employees as employees gain increasing experience on the job. The noninteractive hypothesis, by contrast, predicts that the performance difference will be constant over time. For all three measures of job performance, results supported the noninteractive hypothesis. Also, consistent with the noninteractive hypothesis, correlational analyses showed essentially constant validities for general mental ability (measured earlier) out to 5 years of experience on the job. In addition to their theoretical implications, these findings have an important practical implication: They indicate that the concerns that employment test validities may decrease over time, complicating estimates of selection utility, are probably unwarranted.

Cognitive Ability, Character Skills, and Learning to Play Equilibrium: A Level-kAnalysis

“…Cognitive ability also improves job training performance (see Schmidt and Hunter, 2004, for a survey of the evidence). Schmidt et al (1988) find that even after a period of accumulating experience, cognitive ability continues to matter for job performance, while the findings of McDaniel (1985, as reported in Schmidt andHunter, 2004, Table 4) provide evidence that the relationship between cognitive ability and job performance becomes stronger with more experience. This mirrors our finding that the difference in performance between high cognitive ability and low cognitive ability subjects, as measured by earnings, becomes bigger in the second half of our experiment.…”

Why g matters: The complexity of everyday life

“…Validities for experience can also sometimes rival those for g, but, once again, they fall as complexity increases (McDaniel, Schmidt, & Hunter, 1988). In addition, they fall (whereas those for g do not) as groups gain longer average job tenure (Schmidt, Hunter, Outerbridge, & Goff, 1988). The advantages of superior experience fade-but those of superior g do not-in more experienced groups of workers.…”

Personality scale validities increase throughout medical school.

“…The patterns found in the ability domain are in direct contrast to those reported for personality variables in this study. As F. L. Schmidt et al (1988) noted, the different nature of GPA criteria in different years may also account for the declining validities of cognitive ability tests.…”

“…Even though there exists a large literature on cognitive ability tests that is directed at whether such tests retain their predictive value in the long run (Barrett, Phillips, & Alexander, 1981;Campbell & Knapp, 2001;Deadrick & Madigan, 1990; F. L. Schmidt, Hunter, Outerbridge, & Goff, 1988), few studies have focused on the long-term predictive validity of noncognitive predictors such as experience, interests, biographical data, assessment center dimension ratings, or personality variables.…”